Hypatia Symposium – Climate Change

Climate Change

In Hypatia 29.3, a special issue on Climate Change, feminist philosophers Chris Cuomo (author of Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing) and Nancy Tuana (author of Feminism and Science) focus critical attention on one of the most pressing social and environmental issues of our day. Policy makers have recently begun to acknowledge the disproportionate impacts of climate change on women and disadvantaged communities, but feminist analyses of the complex epistemic and political dimensions of climate change, as well as its causes and effects, are urgently needed. This special issue initiates a necessary conversation that will deepen our understanding and help identify promising opportunities for positive change. Co-editors Cuomo and Tuana have invited scholars and activists working at the forefront of feminist climate justice to share their perspectives. Watch the interviews online, and join the co-editors in an open forum on issues on August 18-22, 2014.

This is a very good article, but I do have one bone to pick with MacGregor. Is she the newest form of climate sceptic? Critical thinking is put to use to caste Armageddon stories into the light of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. As though, because people have been finding ways to describe and fear the ‘end of the world’ for millennia, they are all crazy loonytunes. In a secular world, it is easy to be sceptical of the fundamentalist parading in a crowded market with their penance cross on their back. Or those frightened of a comet and thinking it heralds the doom of humankind, a plague, a calamity. But just as its important not to universalise subjectivity or democracy, or other normative notions, it is important not to universalise Armageddon stories. Climate change needs to be evaluated in its specificity. The ‘consensus’ of science that it is ‘true’ is a reaction to the scepticism disseminated by the Koch Brothers and other vested interests, trying to slow down the political will to move away from fossil fuels. Is that not where we need to direct our politically savvy critical thinking? At the specificity of the climate discourse?